Engendering the Egyptian socio-economic context

The prevailing socio-economic context places Egyptian women, as in many Arab countries, at a disadvantage. Therefore, there is a need to build up the capacity of all stakeholders to remedy this situation, and to provide women with facilities to engage in economic activities and achieve socio-economic status. The ILO Subregional office for North Africa, Cairo is developing two main initiatives:

A project to mainstream gender equality, aimed at helping ILO constituents and other national and international stakeholders operating in Egypt (at the national and local levels) to integrate gender concerns into their institutions and their development policies and programmes. Its main components are:

• Capacity building of recipients, to mainstream gender concerns into decent work policies and programmes, by reviewing existing policies on gender equality and obstacles to equal participation, evaluating recipients' technical capacity in gender analysis, planning and advocacy, and developing a training programme based on identified needs;
• Gender mainstreaming in decent work issues, through applying the newly acquired skills in gender analysis and planning to decent work issues. This includes providing a set of specific tools to make women's as well as men's concerns an integral dimension within the selected decent work issues;
• Supporting social dialogue on gender equality and establishing a network of gender advocates, to adopt a participatory approach towards gender mainstreaming. The Ministry of Manpower, employers' and workers' organizations and other recipients will be provided a methodology to address issues of particular concern to both men and women, and to develop approaches facilitating collaboration with civil society organizations.

A project on "Women's Entrepreneurship Development and Gender Equality" (WEDGE). Its objective is to facilitate the provision of practical assistance to help women start, formalize and expand their own enterprises. The approach used is based on developing a knowledge base on women entrepreneurs, promoting their representation, advocacy and voice (including potential ones), along with developing innovative support services for women entrepreneurs. The target groups include women entrepreneurs who are thinking of creating their own business, women in the informal economy wishing to formalize their businesses, and women already in business who want to expand it; especially those with disabilities. SRO Cairo will work with constituents, associations of women entrepreneurs and others serving them, including business support agencies, to facilitate the attainment of the project's objectives.